Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

[Edit: if a potential employer asked my previous salary] I would have zero qualms (zero) saying any number I wanted. If I was asked for paystubs I would say I'll get them later and add that the number may not have been exact, it could be off substantially I want to be upfront about that. If I have to put a number in a form and sign that I swear it is accurate, I would put an asterisk and explain that it is indicative of what I want them to think.

I don't see ethical problems with this behavior. It is practically what I actually would do.

If HR absolutely cannot start without my notarized sworn copy of pay stubs then I would not work there, and their loss. For anyone else, HR's job is to find qualified people, they are not going to kick you out once they've started onboarding you.

You don't have to lie, but you don't have to answer their questions any more than they have to ask yours about their company - HR doesn't work far from payroll, if as part of your interviews you asked to know the CEO's salary, would they tell you? Or the ratio between then lowest and highest salary at the company? (2.5x, 3x, 5x, 10x, 50x, 100x)

Things don't have to be hard and fast. If they don't like how I roll they can hire someone else. If I don't like their level of transparency I can refuse their offer.

Plus they're free to fire me if they don't like me.

You should answer illegal questions the same way. e.g. in an interview, how old are you. Say whatever you want, just add "I don't like to give am exact age just use that". If they're surprised that a 55 year old shows up too bad for them. Fire you if they don't like it. You're not paid to be 25 and you're not paid to have a certain salary history. You're paid to do a certain job - everything else is just friction.

Say whatever you want, as long as you can do the job. Don't lie about degrees or credentials.

Don't practice law or perform surgery without a license.

> You have a very naive, non-nuanced, and absolutist view of the world.

Already excited for the personal attacks and logical fallacies which await.

> Are you serious? Do you really think Glassdoor is a legitimate authority for salary at companies? They do zero verification and are mostly dependent on people's honesty. Personally, I've signed up for no less than 10 Glassdoor accounts with companies I've never worked for with salaries way above and below my pay grade. Contrast that Comcast, who knows exactly how much each employee makes down to the penny.

Sounds like the same argument people made against Wikipedia, which I consider to be a very legitimate source of information on average. You are clearly an outlier by being dishonest.

> I've seen it happen a few times, they don't just pretend like you didn't lie.

Another anecdote.. I'm looking for evidence, if you have any. Not that they wouldn't fire you, but for how common it is that they actually search for your past salaries to verify.

> This is simple math. Generally, 100% of your income will come from Comcast if you work for them. Your impact on the financial fortune of a billion dollar company is negligible.

No, Comcast represents 1/ms % of your potential income, where m= the number of employers, and s=average salary per position. Since this thread started, I've seen people try to play the numbers multiple ways, and every time they underestimate the collective influence of the job seekers.

Going to skip through your attempts at condescension here, and get to the heart of the matter:

> You do not possess absolute freedom. You can't do whatever you want, you live in a society with other people and we have rules.

In a free society, you are free to do whatever you want so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others. I think we are in agreement here, but you just didn't have a fundamental way of expressing it, so now you do. It's called the nonaggression principle. Of course, everything infringes on everyone's rights in some way, so my philosophy is to maximize net freedom.

Jefferson agreed with this philosophy and enshrined certain rights such as free speech, even though free speech can offend. Of course, there are exceptions for slander and harassment and the likes. However, I do not think asking a question could ever be considered an exception to that rule, including the above questions you listed. And in fact, most of those questions are required, not outlawed, for government reporting. The government is the primary questioner of that personal information, and I think they are the only ones that should NOT be allowed to ask because they are the only ones you could be FORCED to answer.

> I don't agree with it, but you are not free to make crystal methamphetamine even if it is 100% for personal use. You are not free to walk around naked. The canonical example is you are not free to yell fire in a crowded building.

So let's apply what you just learned. In the first case, I think you should be allowed to make meth and use it yourself. Unless there is a guarantee of inherently affecting others, which you might be able to make a decent case for with PCP. Yes, I understand there are rules, but that's a terrible argument because the rules are bad.

Walking around naked, not hurting anyone, you should probably be able to do it on your own property/potentially even public property. Private entities should be able to say 'no shoes, no service.'

Yelling fire in a theater is a different case, where you are clearly infringing on the rights of others and putting people in danger. So it's illegal, and it should be.

I personally know of a case where someone got rejected because they asked for too much compared to his previous salary, even though the person who got hired was offered more money(but it was a smaller increase percentage wise over his previous job). Basically guy was brilliant in the interview, engineering team said they want him, but HR rejected him because he said he wants 80k, while he was making 60k previously(he worked outside of London before). HR instead hired a guy who interviewed much worse, but he only asked for an increase of 5k(from 90k to 95k).

No, a free market is not defined by absence of regulation!

Even fervent laissez-faire economists admit the necessity of appropriate regulations: contract enforcement rules, avoidance of monopolies, a system of law and order for handling disputes, etc.

A free market is defined as an exchange where both sides have access to the same information.

It isn't trespassing when a OSHA inspector visits a faculty. So it does appear that exceptions exist. Why not in this case?